NETGEAR Nighthawk X4S Smart WiFi Router (R7800) - AC2600 Wireless Speed (up to 2600 Mbps) | Up to 2500 sq ft Coverage & 45 Devices | 4 x 1G Ethernet, 2 x 3.0 USB, and 1 x eSATA ports

I just upgraded to the R7800 from an R7000. I was pretty pleased with the R7000 range and performance, but was having issues with a Dropcam Pro (which is used as a baby monitor) constantly timing out. I have about 20 devices that, depending on the time of day, are competing for bandwidth on a fairly consistent ~115-125Mbps(down)/10Mbps(up) connection (only about 8 devices are wireless, the remaining devices are hardwired and pass through a Netgear ProSAFE GSS116E). Dropcam average bandwidth is only supposed to be between 200kb/s(0.2Mbs) average, 500kb/s(0.5Mbs) max. There was no reason I could find for the Dropcam to be stuttering so frequently, when all of my other devices operated at expected speeds. I had even moved the router's location so that it was only about 10 feet away from the Dropcam, with only a single interior (drywall only) wall separating the two (tested signal strength was excellent at the Dropcam). The R7000 was not placed anywhere near anything that could interfere with the signal (additionally, my WiFi signal was excellent in all parts of my home). I tried connecting with the 2.4Ghz band as well as 5Ghz. I was utilizing QOS on the most current firmware and had given the Dropcam the highest priority (by the device's MAC address), but was still having issues constantly.I figured I'd try the R7800 and see if the QOS handling was any better. Although I couldn't find any clear explanation between the "Advanced" QOS on the R7000 vs the "Dynamic" QOS on the R7800, it seems that the Dynamic QOS seems to have made all the difference in the world for me (or perhaps something else in the R7800), as the upgrade solved all of my Dropcam stuttering issues immediately. I've only been running it for about a week so far, but have had no disconnects, or buffering/stuttering with the R7800 so far. I've even tried taxing things by simultaneously streaming the Dropcam feed on multiple devices (1 iPad, 3 iPhones, a MacBook, a PC desktop running the feed in both Firefox and Chrome, at the same time), while playing multiplayer Halo 5 on an Xbox One, and streaming 1080p Netflix on a PS3. No lag in my gaming, 1080p Netflix, and no stuttering on any of the simultaneously running Dropcam feeds. In short, it works for me. So I'm happy.Just to be clear, the R7000 gave me excellent signal strength throughout my home and worked fine for me when gaming or streaming Netflix, but anything with the Dropcam was constantly buffering. The R7800 seems to resolve whatever specific issues I was having with the Dropcam.Also, I think it's worth mentioning that the GUI for the 7800 is similar, yet very much improved over the R7000. Little things like being able to manually assign names/labels for each device on your network and even choose an appropriate icon (game console, switch, TV, PC, iPhone, etc.) for quick and easy viewing of all connected devices is awesome. I no longer need to determine each device on my network based solely off of the MAC address.Thanks Netgear! The R7800 is definitely the best router I've ever owned. No issues. Zero complaints.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I modified this device right out of the box by flashing OpenWRT firmware. If you want a review of the firmware that ships with it, look elsewhere. If you want to know how this works with OpenWRT installed, read on.I bought this model specifically because it had support for OpenWRT. I've been using it for years on an older router that finally bit the dust, and wanted to keep the same functionality and API for my internal systems.The flash was a simple matter of following directions (tftp). It took on the first try, started up with a solid connection, and runs well. I have well over 35 IoT devices and several tablets, all of which talk to this device without issue. Most IoT are using 2.5G with WPA2, the higher end devices are now using 5G with a mix of WPA2/3.OWRT supports both radios separately, provides bridging, NAT, and all the things you expect of out a router. It also supports the USB ports (as drives at least), and has plenty of CPU cycles, flash space, and memory to make this a long-haul device. I was able to quickly copy over configurations, and re-subnet most of the IoT items into a DMZ and/or in isolation area. This prevents them from either talking to the outside word, or to anything but the outside world, depending on need (Alexa is quite sure she's all alone on the LAN.)The speed is rather nice on the LAN (and WLAN). Internet connectivity is only limited by my ISP for outside world connections. The latency is quite low, but it's not that important to me either, since I'm not a FPS player that needs lightning fast response times. I've read some support pages that indicate QOS/SWT are shape-able to get very low latency, should I ever care to try it. For what I use it for, it's running under 2% most of the time, and showing no difficulty handling multiple streams to several devices from Prime and/or a local server. Can't ask for much better hardware and/or simplicity of modding for the price.